Most people have never discharged an extinguisher. On the day it matters, the difference between a small incident and a bad one is usually whether somebody in the room has done it before with their own hands.
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC runs hands-on fire extinguisher training at your facility across Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. We bring the props, the fuel, the dry chemical extinguishers, and the instructor. Your people go home having actually put out a fire, which is a very different thing from having watched a video about putting out a fire. We have been doing this since 1975 — the shop is in Platteville, the technicians are based across Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois.
Why Hands-On Matters
Almost every workplace has extinguishers, and almost every workplace has staff who have never touched one. When those two facts meet during an actual fire, what usually happens is one of a short list of predictable failures.
The person freezes because they do not know whether they are supposed to fight it or leave. Or they pull the pin, squeeze, and discharge from twenty feet away, where the agent never reaches the fuel. Or they aim at the flame instead of the base and watch the fire come right back. Or they sweep too fast, exhaust a ten-second unit in four seconds, and have nothing left. Or they never get the pin out at all because they did not know it needed a hard twist against the seal.
None of those are intelligence problems. They are practice problems. Ten minutes of supervised hands-on time fixes every one of them, and it does something a video cannot: it teaches people what the recoil, the noise, the cloud, and the visibility loss actually feel like. The first time a person discharges an extinguisher should not be during a fire.
It also teaches the more important lesson, which is when not to fight. A trained person recognizes the fire that is already past the point of a portable unit, and their first move is to get people out and call the fire department rather than empty a ten-pound ABC into something that needed a hose line.
What a Class Covers
A standard session runs about an hour for a group of ten to twenty and combines a short classroom portion with live hands-on time. We adjust the content to your facility — a machine shop, a nursing home, and a school kitchen do not have the same hazards or the same evacuation picture.
- Fire behavior basics. The fire triangle, how fast a fire actually grows, and why the first two minutes decide everything.
- Fire classes and extinguisher types. A, B, C, D, and K, and what happens when you use the wrong one. This is where people learn why dry chemical on a grease fire can make things worse.
- Reading the label. What 2A:10B:C actually means, and how to know at a glance whether the unit on the wall covers what is burning in front of you.
- The decision to fight or evacuate. Size of the fire, whether you have a clear exit behind you, whether the smoke is manageable, and whether anyone has pulled the alarm. We are direct about this: most workplace fires should be evacuated, not fought.
- PASS technique. Pull, aim, squeeze, sweep — taught, then practiced, then corrected.
- Live hands-on. Every participant discharges an extinguisher on a live fire prop under instructor supervision.
- Your building specifically. Where your units are, what type each one is, what your monthly check looks like, and what your evacuation plan says.
How the Live Portion Works
We use a propane-fueled training prop with an instructor-controlled shutoff, so the fire is repeatable, the size is controlled, and it goes out instantly if anything goes sideways. No burning wood pallets, no diesel pans, no smoke complaints from the neighbors, and no cleanup.
Participants put the fire out with real dry chemical extinguishers — the same ABC units that hang on your wall, not water-filled trainers. The weight, the pin, the throw and the cloud of powder are exactly what they will meet in an actual fire, which is the point. We bring enough charged units for everyone, so nothing comes off your walls, and we run it outdoors on a hard surface because there is residue.
Everyone gets at least one full discharge. If somebody misses on the first attempt — too far back, aimed high, swept too fast — they go again. The point is that every person leaves having actually done it correctly, not having attempted it once.
We need a hard outdoor surface roughly 30 by 30 feet, clear of vehicles and overhead obstructions, and reasonable weather. Wind matters more than temperature; we have run classes in January without much trouble.
Who Needs This
OSHA 1910.157 is the practical driver for most of our customers. If your emergency action plan expects employees to use portable extinguishers, the standard requires that you train them on general principles and the hazards involved with incipient stage firefighting, at the time of initial assignment and annually thereafter.
Beyond the regulation, the businesses that call us tend to fall into a few groups. Manufacturers and fabricators with hot work. Restaurants and institutional kitchens, where the Class K unit is the one nobody understands. Nursing homes, assisted living, and clinics, where evacuation is slow and the staff decision matters more than anywhere else. Schools and municipalities. Auto and equipment shops. Grain and agricultural operations. Contractors who want their crews trained before an insurance audit.
We also do smaller sessions for management teams and safety committees, and refresher classes for facilities that trained everybody two years ago and have since turned over half the staff.
Scheduling and Class Size
We schedule around your shifts. Split-shift operations usually run two back-to-back sessions so second shift is not asked to come in on their own time. We have done 6 a.m. classes and 10 p.m. classes and neither one is unusual for us.
Ten to twenty per session is the sweet spot. Below ten and you are paying for the trip more than the training; above twenty and the hands-on time per person gets thin. For larger facilities we run multiple sessions in one day, which is more efficient than multiple trips.
We provide sign-in sheets and certificates of completion for your training file. If your insurance carrier or your corporate safety program needs specific documentation, tell us in advance and we will match the format.
Pricing is per session rather than per head, with a travel component depending on distance. Call with a headcount and a location and we will give you a number on the phone.
Combine It With Your Service Visit
The most efficient way to do this is to schedule training on the same day as your annual extinguisher inspection. The technician is already in the building, already walking every unit, and already knows what you have. Training then references your actual equipment in your actual rooms rather than generic examples.
It is also the natural time to teach the monthly check, which is the owner’s responsibility under NFPA 10 and the item most often missed when a fire marshal walks through. Ten minutes with your maintenance lead and it stops being a problem.
If your building has a kitchen suppression system or a paint booth system, we cover the manual pull station in the class. That station is the one component operators are expected to use, and in our experience most kitchen staff have never been shown where theirs is, let alone been told what happens after they pull it. We also handle service, recharge, CO₂ refills, and hood cleaning on the same account.
What People Take Away
The feedback we get is consistent and it is usually some version of the same sentence: it was heavier than I expected, it emptied faster than I expected, and I could not see anything after the first second.
That is exactly the point. A ten-pound ABC extinguisher gives you roughly fifteen seconds of agent, and the visibility inside the discharge cloud is close to zero. Somebody who knows that going in will stand at the right distance, aim low, and sweep at a controlled speed. Somebody who does not will find all of it out at the worst possible moment.
The second thing people take away is permission to leave. A surprising number of employees believe they are expected to fight any fire in their work area. Being told plainly by an instructor that the right answer is often to pull the alarm and get out is one of the more valuable ten seconds of the class.
Training Is a Legal Requirement, Not a Perk
Most owners think of extinguisher training as a nice thing to do for the crew. Federal law treats it differently. If you provide extinguishers in a workplace — and nearly every workplace is required to — OSHA requires you to teach people about them, on a schedule, and to be able to show that you did. Here is what the rule actually says and how a class from us satisfies it.
Education for everyone, hands-on for designated staff
Paragraph (g)(1) requires an educational program that familiarizes employees with the general principles of extinguisher use and the hazards of fighting a fire in its incipient stage. Paragraph (g)(2) says that program must be delivered upon initial employment and at least annually thereafter. Paragraphs (g)(3) and (g)(4) go further for employees who are designated to use extinguishers under the employer’s emergency action plan: they must be trained in the use of the equipment, again upon assignment and annually. Our on-site class covers both tiers in one session.
The plans that decide who fights and who leaves
OSHA’s emergency action plan rule (1910.38) requires employers to decide, in writing, whether employees are expected to evacuate immediately or whether some are designated to use extinguishers on small fires. The fire prevention plan rule (1910.39) covers housekeeping of ignition sources and fuel. Extinguisher training only makes sense inside those decisions, so our classes start with a simple question: who in this building is actually supposed to pull the pin?
Selection and placement are half of using one
NFPA 10 governs which extinguisher belongs near which hazard, and a class is where that stops being theory. Trainees learn why a Class K unit sits by the fryer and why the fire suppression system is activated before the extinguisher is used, why a water can is dangerous on a live electrical panel, and why a ten-pound ABC is expected to be within 75 feet of any point in an ordinary-hazard building. Knowing the extinguisher on the wall is the right one is part of the confidence to use it.
Who is covered in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois
The OSHA standards apply to private employers in all three states, but each state handles public employees a little differently, and it affects schools, municipalities, county buildings and utilities that call us. Iowa runs its own OSHA-approved state plan through Iowa Workforce Development that covers private and public workplaces alike, adopting the federal standards including 1910.157. Illinois has a state plan that covers state and local government employees, with federal OSHA covering the private sector. Wisconsin’s private employers fall under federal OSHA, while public employees are protected through the Department of Safety and Professional Services’ public-employee safety rules, which adopt the federal standards. The practical result is the same everywhere we work: if you have employees and extinguishers, annual extinguisher education is required, and a documented class is the evidence.
Fire codes reinforce it from the other side. Wisconsin’s Fire Prevention Code, Wis. Admin. Code ch. SPS 314, adopts NFPA 1 for every public building and place of employment, and Iowa’s Iowa Admin. Code 481—Chapter 280 adopts the 2024 International Fire Code, whose Chapter 4 covers emergency planning, evacuation drills and employee training for the occupancies it lists. Health-care facilities, schools, day cares and assembly occupancies in particular are asked by their inspectors and accrediting bodies to show fire-safety training records, and a roster from our class is one of the easiest documents to produce.
What the record needs to show
OSHA does not prescribe a form, but an inspector or an insurance auditor will expect to see the date, the instructor, the topics covered and the names of the people trained. We leave a sign-in roster and a summary of the curriculum after every class, and we can issue individual certificates of completion when your safety program calls for them. We also recommend keeping the training record with the extinguisher maintenance records required by 1910.157(e)(3), so that everything an inspector asks about extinguishers lives in one folder. If your crew turns over during the year, the new hires are owed the education “upon initial employment” — call us and we will fold them into a short refresher rather than waiting for the anniversary.
- 29 CFR 1910.157, Portable fire extinguishers — Occupational Safety and Health Administration (see paragraph (g), Training and education)
- NFPA 10, Standard for Portable Fire Extinguishers — National Fire Protection Association
- Wis. Admin. Code ch. SPS 314, Fire Prevention — Wisconsin Legislature
About Us
Fire & Safety Equipment III LLC has been headquartered in Platteville, Wisconsin since 1975, with technicians based across Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois. We run our own service vehicles across Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, and we are a distributor for Amerex, ANSUL, and Pyro-Chem.
Our instructors are the same technicians who service equipment in the field, which means the class is taught by somebody who has seen what fails and why, not by somebody reading slides. If you want a reference, ask us for a customer near you.
Where We Train
We travel to your site. Classes run in parking lots, loading docks, yards, and any open area with enough clearance and a hard surface. Here is where we work most often, though we go well beyond this list.
Iowa
Wisconsin
Questions We Get Asked
How long is a training session?
About an hour for a group of ten to twenty, split between a short classroom portion and live hands-on time. Larger groups run as multiple back-to-back sessions on the same day.
Does everyone actually get to use an extinguisher?
Yes. Every participant discharges a real dry chemical extinguisher on a live fire prop under supervision, and anyone who misses on the first try goes again. That is the whole reason to hold the class in person.
Do we need to provide anything?
A hard outdoor area roughly 30 by 30 feet, clear of vehicles and overhead obstructions, and an indoor space for the classroom portion. We bring the prop, the fuel, the dry chemical extinguishers, and the paperwork.
Is training required by OSHA?
If your emergency action plan expects employees to use portable extinguishers, OSHA 1910.157 requires training at initial assignment and annually after that. If your plan is total evacuation, the requirements are different — we can help you sort out which applies to you.
Do you provide certificates?
Yes. Sign-in sheets and certificates of completion for your training file. If your insurer or corporate safety program needs a particular format, tell us ahead of time.
Can you train on second or third shift?
Yes. We regularly run early-morning and late-evening sessions so shift workers are not asked to come in on their own time.
Is the fire real?
Yes, but it is a propane-fueled prop with an instructor-controlled shutoff, so the size is repeatable and it can be killed instantly. No wood, no diesel, no smoke complaints, no cleanup.
Can we combine training with our annual inspection?
That is the most efficient way to do it, and it is what we recommend. The technician is already in the building, and the class can then reference your actual units in your actual rooms.
Tell us what you have and where you are.
Extinguishers, a kitchen system, a hood, a booth — one visit, one invoice. We reply the same business day.
5675 Southwest Rd, Platteville, WI 53818 · Mon–Thu 8:00–4:30, Fri 8:00–2:00